EXPLORATION A
by irishais
Summary: Kill the beast, drink its blood. She is not afraid.


**EXPLORATION A**

_-irishais-_

_A/N: Gift fic for gietzeng/selryel (AO3), for Final Fantasy Exchange 2010. _

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The world is obsidian and magma. She hears an echo of her voice from so long ago—_my charm makes them nervous—_but she has no one here to charm now.

It's just her, and the darkness, and the bright hot rivers.

She stands there, and she waits, for something howling in the darkness.

_(kompress)_

The sewers in Deling City are bright and pristine, something she wasn't expecting, despite having the map practically memorized. It makes battling monsters so much easier.

But she takes down one beast and another and another, and they are coming from everywhere, pouring out of the walls—

She cries for backup, and she is alone.

_(kompress)_

The missile base. A voice overhead, counting down, telling them they have (fivefourthreetwo) seconds to live.

Selphie is a distant yellow blur ahead of her, and she reaches out for the other girl.

She is running as fast as she can, and she is moving like a fly in molasses.

_(kompress)_

Ten minutes, the voice says inside her head, and she can envision the timer rolling backwards. Ten minutes to beat the demon and the record. She has spent hours upon hours studying in the library for this.

_Kill the beast_

_drink its blood._

Her whip cracks. The sound echoes forever.

_(kompress)_

The thought of going through the gate terrifies her, more than it does even Rinoa, who is gliding ahead with confident grace and poise, and all Quistis wants to do is run, run, run and hide like she is seven again.

"Are you all ready?" she asks, her voice strong, secure, steady.

Thunder booms and lightning illuminates the castle, a scar of stone and mortar and blood against the sky.

She looks at Squall, and his face is melting in her mind, a beautiful, decaying waxwork. She wants to catch the dripping wax in her hands and try to put him back together.

"Don't be afraid," he says, but his words are stretched out so far that they snap before she can take them in.

_(kompress)_

She wears the floppy yellow tie of a cadet again, and it swings wildly against her chest as she ducks and rolls and dodges, running through Ifrit's labyrinth. One daring leap sends her hurling over a narrow river of magma and landing solidly on the other side, her body absorbing the impact with ease.

Xu makes fun of her for jumping rope for an hour a day.

"What are you, seven?" she comments, pummeling the punching bag with so much force that the brace affixing it to the ceiling creaks ominously. "Are you going to double-dutch them to death?"

Quistis doesn't stop counting—four hundred, four-oh-one, four-oh-two.

Xu is ruthless, raw and sharp, all right angles and sarcasm. She is Quistis' best friend, and when she looks over the footage of Quistis' fire cavern run, she stops making fun of the jump roping.

_(kompress)_

Every room they walk into in Ultimecia's castle is a dead end.

Another battle, another minion, another trap.

She half expects a minotaur. She doesn't know what to expect anymore.

_(kompress)_

She devours, devours, monster blood caking her chin and throat.

The magic slips through her veins, bitter blue acid. Degenerator, the spell is called, and when she speaks it aloud for the first time, she is in awe at the ruin it leaves in its wake.

"You're like a sorceress," Rinoa comments later, and Quistis says that she is _nothing_ like that. Never, never like that.

Kill the beast, drink its blood.

_(kompress)_

Ifrit bows before her.

_**(kompress)**_

Youngest Instructor in Garden history.

_**(Kompress.)**_

"Talk to a wall."

_**(Kompress.)**_

The beast wears a tattered red gown, and she _does _have horns, big enough to gore a hole in anything she aims at. Her feet are lions' claws. She laughs at them.

"Existence denied!"

_**(KOMPRESS.)**_

The clouds are endless, and she runs after Selphie, Zell, Irvine. _Help me_.

_**(KOMPRESS.)**_

_Yesyesyes_, the magic sings, burning up her veins.

_**(KOMPRESS.)**_

Suddenly, she is falling, and the blood-beating drums have stopped.

(_Quistis_?)

The waves are monstrous, beating down upon the shore, and she is soaked to the skin, salt stinging her eyes and bitter in her mouth. She wades out of the sea.

She drips onto Garden's grounds, leaving a trail of wet footprints in her wake, her boots hanging ruined from one hand. Her hair is a knotted mess around her face. She spits sand and salt into one of the placid running fountains.

The SeeDs guarding the gate can't seem to find the words to even say hello, and Quistis walks past them, silent, soaked.

Xu is standing in front of the great glass wall in the commander's office, her hands behind her, and when she turns at the sound of the door opening, Quistis just looks at her, her whip uncoiled in one hand and sea-ruined boots in the other.

"Quistis—"

"Are you real?" she croaks, finally, and Xu is there in four strides, pulling her into a fierce hug, ignoring the saltwater and the kelp hanging off of her shoulders.

Her boots hit the floor with a thud, and Xu leads her to one of the chairs in front of Cid's—_Squall's, now_—desk, sitting her down, kneeling before her, gently pulling at her fingers to release her whip. It falls to the floor, a sharp clatter of chain and dragon skin leather against thin, expensive carpet. She stares at the pattern it makes against the floor.

Water drips off her skin, and she can't tell if it's seawater or tears, but Xu, blessed Xu, is pressing a cup of something hot to her lips, coffee, fresh-made, murmuring for her to tilt her head up and drink.

She tries to take the cup herself, but lifting her arms is terribly hard, so her best friend—_loyalty, friendship, it's what we need to find our way back—_ talks to her in soft tones, coaxing coffee through her lips like she is a child. The warmth floods through her, and she stops shivering.

"Where are—"

"We've gotten a report that Squall and Rinoa are in Winhill. We've dispatched a jet."

"Okay." It is all she can muster up, all that isn't what she wants to say, all that isn't

_(I was so scared)_

But she won't say it out loud.


End file.
